MARTIN, FnAccOts XAVIER (c.1762-1846). An Atneriean jurist and historian. lie was born in Marseilles, France, and when abort eighteen years of age engaged in business at Martinique. He failed and went tee New Berne, N. C., about 1783. He learned the printer's trade, and soon had an office of his own. Under the patronage of ex-Governor Abner Nash he began the study of law. In 1792 he compiled by request of the General Assembly the British statutes which were in force in North Carolina at the time of the Itevolution. hi 1794 lie compiled the private nets of the Assembly, and in 1803 extended Judge Iredell's revision from 1789. Meanwhile he had translated and published Pothier 011 Obligations, setting the type himself. In 1806.07 be represented the borough of Ncw• Berne in the Assembly. Tn ISO!) President. Madison appoint ed him judge of the Territory of Mississippi, and the next year he was transferred to the Territory of Orleans. When the State of Louisi ana was admitted to the Union, he became the first .\ttornes•General, in 1813. In 181.5 he was appointed to the Supreme Court and served thirty-one years. During the latter part of this
time lie was senior or presiding judge. At the time of his app.)intwent the law in force in the State was a mixture of Spanish and French statutes and deeisions, into which the writ of habeas C0/717/8 and the system of procedure in criminal eases according to the common law had been introduced. Judge Martin's services in welding into a homogeneous whole this mass of contradictory statutes and principles gave him the title, 'Father of the jurisprudence of Louisi ana.' During the last ten years of his life he was !emetically blind, but continued to do full work on the bench until snpersoled by the judges appointed under the new Constitution in 1515. hi addition to his judicial labors, he published two volumes of Reports of the Superior Courts of Orleans, front 1809 to 1812 (1811 and 1813) : eighteen volumes of Reports of the Supreme Court of Louisiana (1S13-30): a Distory of Lou isiana (1827) : and a History of Yorth Carolina (1829). though this was e4impleted before he left that State in 1809.